Refresh Bolivia|

Well here it is, the last blog post of the summer. I can’t believe the month went by so fast. Honestly I’m chilling in the La Paz airport right now and have a good amount of time to kill so I’m gonna divide this post up into 2 sections. One actually doing what the point of the blog is -- telling you what I did today and what not -- part two will contain some emotional rambling that no one really has to read but I’m going to write it anyways. Part One: My Day Start off pretty

Hilarious how I thought Akshay leaving would give me more time. Today I had meetings/activities from 10am until essentially 11pm. The day began at 7:30am with my last run in this country (because tomorrow is spinning). It was fun times and who knows maybe I will miss the 2-3 8am cat calls. Not that it’s going to get any better in Ecuador. Then I had a meeting with Maria Eugenia and Angelica at 10am to talk a bit about how Angelica’s NGO - Serve Abroad-- could work with the w

Woke up, gym, meeting with Procasha. Really rude individuals… they requested the meeting and I showed up 10 minutes late because the taxi driver got lost twice and they were like “oh the meeting was at 11am not 11:10am.” I hate it when people talk to me like I’m a child or in general criticize me… So that did not start well. Then they came in and asked “what can we help you with” well that was it, no time for games I just said “ I’m here as a favor to you, you called 3 times

Day 21: June 6th, 2016 - End of CHW Pilot Woke up, went on a run, went to Maria Eugenia’s house to start the last of the CHW workshops. Today we covered first aid and since it was the first time I ran the workshop by myself I got to see how fun it was to actually talk to the ladies and how needed quechua actually was. After today I felt extremely motivated to learn quechua but of course I won’t this summer. But maybe someday -- definitely will if Akshay finishes writing his b

Today I woke up and decided to not go on a run, which was weird and a bad call because I felt antsy for the rest of the day. But it was because I wanted to go to church which I did. Then I studied for 5 hours! Riveting times. Then I went on a walk for no reason, bought a mango chile popsicle and went on a run because I was still feeling antsy. Then I came home and did more MCAT studying! What an amazing day. Oh yeah and Rodrigo took me out to dinner because I think he somehow

Well Akshay left yesterday and Rodrigo is busy this week because he has to organize some sort of national justice conference, so that’s pretty depressing for me. Today was a pretty chill day. I woke up at 10am went to the gym, got back home and did some MCAT studying. That’s right I have to take the MCAT on August 19th, so if anyone actually reads this and feels like praying for that would be awesome because it is much needed. I can only study for like 5-6 hours a day max bec

Today was my last workshop with the women. We continued our discussion on sexual health from Monday, learning more about physiology and different methods of contraception. Before starting the lesson, however, I introduced the women to Angelica, who is a teacher at the language school Conexiones entre mundos and also the co-founder of an NGO called Serve Abroad, that works in the realms of education and culture. We (RB) are trying to think of ways to combine our efforts with S

Wow I can’t believe it’s already June, time really flies in Bolivia. Today I woke up after having slept 11 hours the night before and I definitely felt a lot better. We had a surprise TV interview that was supposed to be at 9:30am – surprise because neither Akshay nor I knew about it. Anyway this TV channel was pretty jank, the set was falling to pieces and Akshay confirmed that his high school theater was better funded than this channel. But! We are extremely grateful to be

Another unreal day in Bolivia. Literally amazed at how much RB has grown in these past couple of weeks. It seems like executive board trips definitely need to be a thing in the summer. Just as a recap we have: constructed our first microflush toilet, trained community health workers & started research with Elizabeth Seton University AND today we increased our media power a thousand fold thanks to the one and only Rodrigo who is just by the way the most amazing person ever. Th

So today was an interesting day because even though it felt like we were just sitting in the car and on the ground eternally we actually got a lot of stuff done. It started off at the obscenely early for a Sunday time of 8am. Maria Eugenia picked us up in her jeep-clown car and we drove off the 4 de Marzo. On the way we ran into 2 of the ladies from the barrios and of course Maria Eugenia offered to give them a ride –this is obviously the right thing to do but it’s just funny